Number 44 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.
I didn’t know anything about Gazelle Twin before putting this on.
Initially, it put me off a bit, there was some early music choral bits going on, which triggers my PetShopBoys-o-phobia.
However, upon listening a bit closer, I realized that in the Chorales, and spoken word segments, such that they were, the lyrics were the every day detritus of life in the twenty-first century. Things you might hear on the bus or when you’re reading the newspaper. “Just look at these kids now. No respect. It was much better in my day.” etc. Cut ups, a la W.S. Burroughs.
And, like Burroughs, it is often quite darkly funny.
The music is electronic, beat and loop based, with prominent vocals as mentioned. And occasional recorders.
A super interesting album, if I were ordering these, Pastoral would be in the top 10.
Nepali Green Pearl Tea from Rainbow Grocery in SF.
One of my coworkers has noticed that I am often making tea, and I sometimes share with him, so he brought in some he got at Rainbow Grocery, with the caveat, “I don’t know much about tea, but Nepali Tea seemed interesting.”
I found it interesting, as well. I didn’t know ANY green tea was made in Nepal or India. I thought it was all Black.
My initial impressions are that some care was taking with producing this tea. The dried tea is well formed and undamaged. After steeping I see that it is 1 bud, 1 leaf.
I brewed this with my usual Chinese Green tea gaiwan method.
6 grams of tea, water starting around 185 degrees F.
The first thing I notice is a smoky ham-like character. Not like a tea that has been smoked or contaminated with smoke as part of the kill green, but as character of the tea. A little greasy, with a thick soup in the first steeps, but quickly thinning.
The first steeps are super intense, but the flavor quickly fades as the brewing continues.
Unfortunately, the overall impression the tea leaves, after the initial flavor shock, is of an unpleasant lingering bitterness in the throat, which continues through the less intense later steeps.
The wet leaves have a strong scent, but the tea itself is super subtle in flavor/scent. Slightly herbal with some savory characteristics.
It’s not until you contemplate the aftertaste, and get the bitter lightness on your tongue that evaporates to sweetness, before it even seems like you have been drinking tea.
The aftertaste is subtle, yet very long, and the buzz powerful.
Number 43 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.
Bleep sums the album up with the following:
“In an endless ocean of critics and producers suffering the daily dose of terminally impressed dusty tape tekno and hauntology focused hardcore and jungle throwback 12″s, Nkisi’s The Dark Orchestra is a glass of ice-cold water smashed across a scene that is in much need of a very serious wake-up call.”
I really have not much idea what the Bleep Store writeup of this album means, other than to say I did enjoy Nkisi’s The Dark Orchestra.
It is an EP. It is faster techno-ish electronic music with serious sub-bass action. There is enough variation over the EPs 15 or so minutes that nothing ever gets stale, in fact the whole thing altogether sounds not much like anything I have heard before.
One thing I will note is that Nkisi is now on a label called Arcola, which is a sub-label of Warp. She had previously been on a label called NON-Worldwide which has a few compilations. I seriously recommend checking them out. Some of the tracks on those compilations are pretty mind blowing. Electronic music that stretches its boundaries to include the world.
Personally, while I enjoyed it for a while, the bombastic beats get exasperating after while, and I was feeling pretty done well before the album was over.
Grid of Points by Grouper; Bandcamp Link: Grid of Points
Number 40 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.
I’ve heard Grouper over the years, and always had the idea that I like them, or her, but I can’t say I’ve ever really sat down and listened to an album.
Grid of Points is very short, 15 or 20 minutes. (Shortness is seemingly a common thing among Wire Magazine’s picks this year. A lot of EPs.)
Initially, I felt like it was too short and wondered why it couldn’t be longer. It is kind of drone-ey and atmospheric. A drone-ey 4 minute some can easily become a drone-ey 15 minute song.
Then I listened back to a couple of Grouper’s other records, and realized that Grid of Points is less sonically diverse than some of her other work, so it probably made sense to keep it short, before it wore out its welcome.
As near as I can tell, the primary new factor on Grid of Points is that she makes extensive use of multi-tracked harmonizing vocals for the first time.
Other than that, it is pretty much the usual reverb drenched atmospheric mood pieces with spare instrumentation that you would expect from a Grouper album.
If you like that sort of thing, you’ll love it. If you hate reverb drenched vocals, it may not be your bag of cats.
Working my way through green teas, it seems I cannot resist the siren call of Oolong!
There are different types of Oolong, but the most well known is called Tie Guanyin, also sometimes called Iron Goddess of Mercy. According to one of the legends of this type of tea’s origins, a humble tea farmer in Anxi County, Fujian, China, noticed a local temple had fallen into disrepair. He took it upon himself to clean it up, sweep it out, and then offer some incense to the goddess of Mercy, Guanyin. Shortly thereafter, the Goddess appeared to him in a dream. She told him that in the cave behind her temple a treasure awaited that he needed to share with others. When he investigated, he found the shoot of a tea tree. He planted the shoot in his field and nurtured it, the tea it produced was amazing! He gave cuttings of the tree to his neighbors far and wide. When all the tea trees came to fruition, they began selling it under the name “Tie Guanyin” to honor the goddess.
Whenever I’ve seen “Iron Goddess of Mercy” tea on a restaurant menu, I order it, I mean, who could resist such a name?
So I’ve sampled a few over the years.
But, I can’t say I’ve ever had any that even comes close to this one from Yin xiang hua xia tea.
This is a darkly roasted Tie Guanyin. The base of the flavors and smells are similar to dark roasted grain, a bit like a dark beer or Japanese roasted barley tea. On top of that are layers of sweetness and orchid fragrance which perfume the tea pot and cup. The fragrance/taste of the tea is long lasting and haunting, but the perfume is not overpowering. Super elegant and incredibly well balanced.
Number 39 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.
I liked Jlin’s last album, Black Origami, so much, that, well, pretty much anything afterwards is bound to be something of a let down, in one way or another.
However, instead of releasing a next album, proper, she released this album, “…the score for her collaboration with renowned British choreographer Wayne McGregor…”
It is often atmospheric, relies more on synthesizers and melodic phrasing, than pure rhythm. But the rhythmic tracks, when they happen, feel more stripped down and less complex than those on Black Origami. On the edge of something that would pass for commercial electronic dance music (not that I am an expert about that!).
It’s an interesting document, but I don’t feel like it really stands on its own as an “album”. I wish I’d seen the dance piece that it accompanied!
Number 38 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.
There are things I like about Room 25 and things I don’t.
The music and beats are Jazz/Soul/Gospel inspired, which is interesting for a rap album. Noname has an interesting speak-sing delivery. Her poetry is clever and enjoyable.
However, the music is on the AOR side of Jazz, Soul, and Gospel, just a tad too pleasant for my tastes.
The combination of her quiet speak-song delivery and a bit of muddle in the Mids makes it a not very good album to listen to while driving. You just can’t hear her very well over the road or if you are listening to it from something like the speakers on your phone.
Coincidentally, I was reading a pretty cool interview with Dennis Bovell in Wire Magazine (Issue 416, if you want to track it down,) where he talked about aspects of mixing instruments so that each one has it’s own aural space in the mix of a tune.
They didn’t do that and the mix suffers a bit unless you are listening on headphones or in a quiet room.
Hydrorion Remnants by Embassador Dulgoon; Bandcamp Link: Hydrorion Remnants
Number 37 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.
If there’s anything you can glean about me from these reviews, it’s probably that I like to be surprised by the music I am listening to.
Embassador Dulgoon is, apparently, a Chilean musician named Nicolas Carcavilla. He has recorded under various guises over the years. This is his first album as “Embassador Dulgoon”.
The music here was recorded, seemingly live in the studio, between 2014 and 2016, yet it all feels of a piece.
Environmental sounds and animal noises rustle and shiver beneath tuned percussion, marimbas and glockenspiels. Simple melodies evoking childhood keen over complex repetitive rhythms.
Every once in a while the whole thing lurches into something like a krautrock groove, as on “Archways of Lepidodendron”, only to collapse back into percussion, synthesizer, and animal noises.
A thoroughly enjoyable album, my only real complaint is it is over far too soon.